Category: Authoritarianism

Market-Leninism: Cuba’s ‘cosmetic’ reforms aim to forge China Model?

     

Are Cuba’s ruling Communist Party’s proposed constitutional revisions “a way to move the island into the 21st century” or cosmetic changes designed to maintain single-party rule akin to the China… Read more »

Facing up to the difference between election meddling and advancing democracy

     

“Donald Trump’s refusal in Helsinki to credit his intelligence agencies’ findings about Russian electoral interference has unleashed a nationalist fury in Washington unseen since September 11,” Peter Beinart writes for… Read more »

Populist International: Europe-wide super-group sparks alarm

     

Although it is commonly assumed that democratic backsliding starts with electoral problems, other political elements—such as the infringement of individual rights and the freedom of expression—are at the core of… Read more »

Russia lacks ability to roll back post-1990 democratic revolution

     

The West is in crisis because of European weakness, not Russian strength, says analyst Walter Russell Mead. Europe’s weakness has provided Vladimir Putin with opportunities to promote Russian power by… Read more »

‘One-man Marshall Plan’: Was Soros wrong to bet on liberal democracy?

     

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, philanthropist George Soros [inspired by Karl Popper’s Open Society] poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the former Soviet-bloc countries to… Read more »

Are elected leaders ‘making the world less democratic’?

     

On the surface, recent shifts in governments show precisely what a functioning democracy is capable of—voters dictate what they want at the ballot box, analysts Lauren Leatherby and Mira Rojanasakul write for… Read more »

Sharp power central to China’s ‘superpower plans’

     

As the U.S. retreats, Beijing is talking more boldly about how it wants to change the global order and assert its own values and interests, according to Elizabeth Economy, the… Read more »

Russia fuels rise of illiberal civil society in the former Soviet Union

     

Disinformation is one of several tools in the Kremlin toolbox as Russia plays a leading role in promoting illiberal, anti-Western and socially conservative civil society groups, popular movements and political… Read more »

Great power competition requires standing up for democratic values

     

In its 2018 National Defense Strategy, released in January, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump correctly identified great–power competition as the United States’ central security challenge. In recent years, rival states… Read more »